1. Technical Field
The invention disclosed broadly relates to information processing systems and more particularly relates to improvements to word processing systems.
2. Background Art
The test of effective writing is whether the reader is left with an accurate understanding of the writer's intended meaning. Each word or phrase should contribute to the accurate flow of information from the writer to the reader. However, even practiced writers commit the error occasionally using tired, over-familiar words and phrases which have been used by many other writers and which have come in time to mean little. An example is using the phrase "wearing two hats" to convey the meaning of having two jobs or capacities. Another example is substituting the phrase "in no uncertain terms" for the single word "clearly." These errant usages are variously referred to as cliches, trite metaphors, set phrases, pseudo-jargon, popularized technicalities or vogue words. They all have the common fault of not saying what the writer means but only approximating his thought at best, and possibly giving the reader an unintended message that the writer is a lazy thinker.
It would be useful to provide a mechanism for automatically scanning the text of a manuscript on command, searching for trite phrases, highlighting the offending passage and suggesting to the writer acceptable alternatives which can be substituted into the text. A medium which suggests itself for this mechanism is the modern word processor and its associated dictionary-based features. Existing word processors include the dictionary-based feature of checking for spelling errors on command by scanning the text of a manuscript stored in a storage medium, comparing each word in the text with a stored dictionary of correctly spelled words, highlighting misspelled words in the text, and suggesting to the writer the correctly spelled form of the word. One example of this spell-checking feature in a word processor is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,136,395 to Kolpek, et al., entitled "System for Automatically Proofreading a Document," assigned to IBM Corporation. Another dictionary-based feature found in existing word processors is the display of a list of synonyms on command. This is done by scanning the text of a manuscript stored in a storage medium, comparing a word selected by the writer from the text with a stored dictionary of synonyms, and suggesting to the writer acceptable synonyms for the selected word. One example of this synonym generation feature in a word processor is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,384,329 to Rosenbaum, et al., entitled "Retrieval of Related Linked Linguistic Expressions Including Synonyms and Antonyms," assigned to IBM Corporation.
However, the problem of automatically displaying suggested acceptable phrases to replace trite phrases in a manuscript text cannot be solved with the principles used in existing dictionary-based word processing features, because of the need to make the replacement phrase grammatically equivalent to the trite phrase which is to be replaced. Pronouns in the replacement phrase must grammatically agree in person, gender and number with their antecedents in the original sentence. Verbs in the replacement phrase must grammatically agree in person and number with the subject of the original sentence. Grammatic agreement means to correspond in form. For example, if the subject in the original sentence is third person, plural, then the verb in the replacement phrase for that sentence must also be third person, plural.
For a specific example, the sentence "I am not about to climb that mountain." contains the trite phrase "am not about to." A more accurate expression of the writer's meaning is stated by substituting the replacement phrase "do not intend to" for the trite phrase. However, if the original sentence were "He is not about to climb that mountain.", then in order to be grammatically equivalent, the sentence with the replacement phrase would have to start "He does not intend to . . . " The change in the person of the pronoun from the first person form "I" to the third person form "He" requires changing the verb in the trite phrase from "am" to "is" and requires changing the verb in the replacement phrase from "do" to "does." To be grammatically correct, a verb in a sentence must agree with the person of its subject.
If the example is carried one step further, the number of the subject can be changed from singular to plural. Thus, if the third person singular pronoun in the sentence "He is not about to climb that mountain." is changed to the third person plural "They," the verb "is" in the trite sentence is changed to "are," as in "They are not about to climb that mountain." The sentence with the grammatically equivalent replacement phrase would then start "They do not intend to . . . " Thus, to be grammatically correct, a verb in a sentence must agree with the number as well as the person of its subject.
The problem of maintaining grammatical equivalence between the replacement phrase and the trite phrase it replaces becomes further complicated by the requirement that the tense of the verb in the replacement phrase must be the same as the tense of the verb in the trite phrase. If the example is carried an additional step, the tense of the verb can be changed from present to past tense. Thus, if the third person, plural, present tense verb "are" in the trite sentence "They are not about to climb that mountain." is changed to the past tense verb "were," then the third person, plural, present tense verb "do" must be changed to the past tense "did" for the sentence with the replacement phrase "They did not intend to . . . " Thus, to be grammatically correct, a verb in the replacement phrase must agree with the tense, as well as the number and person of the verb in the trite phrase being replaced. This characterizes some of the problems facing prior art.